Julia Garrison
News Editor
3.5/5 stars
Before I watched “Saltburn,” I had heard a lot of warnings from others to watch at my own risk. When I sat down to watch the movie with friends, I felt like I was missing something. Sure, there were times where I questioned the absurdity of the circumstances or felt like I was watching something that I was not supposed to have seen, but the film felt pretty well-rounded in its approach to absurdity mixed with criticism.
There were some other releases this year that I found myself more drawn to than “Saltburn.” Films like “The Iron Claw,” “The Holdovers” and “Godzilla Minus One” found their way into my top films of the year. Nonetheless, I felt like “Saltburn” was a good film to watch and discuss with friends, and a wonderful film in both Jacob Elordi and Barry Keoghan’s repertoire.
More than all of this, I found myself drawn to the music of “Saltburn.” The film takes place in the early 2000s with a college-aged Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) befriending run-of-the-mill rich kid Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi) who eventually invites Oliver to his family home: Saltburn. Oliver—similar to Keoghan’s performance in “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”—intertwines himself with Felix’s family in strange and unusual ways which leads to a grandiose climaxing of events.
Artists like Arcade Fire, MGMT and The Killers find their way into a soundtrack filled with nostalgia for the early 2000s. Although not all the music is time-period accurate (e.g. “Low” by Flo Rida featuring T-Pain was released in 2008, even though the film is supposedly set in 2006), it provides a snapshot of the early 2000s and provides a wonderful thematic backdrop for a film that successfully encapsulated the nostalgia and culture of the early 2000s.
